[concernedctzn]

>As much as we worship high quality, large-population, peer-reviewed studies, ultimately the only study that matters is the n=1, yourself - only you can find out what works for you.

I understand what you're trying to say but found it funny you tried to conflate real vetted science with "worship" and then said to throw all that out in favor of a personal opinion.

[jerf]

What "works for you" doesn't have to be "personal opinion". You can freely conduct scientific experiments on yourself. Analysis of such experiments is even abnormally easy, because you can ignore issues of drawing from a "sample" population in favor of analysis techniques that are based on the fact that you're taking data from 100% of the population of interest. (You may still be "sampling" data, depending on what you're measuring, but you've still only got one dimension of sampling instead of two then, which is still easier to deal with.)

You just aren't allowed to take the n=1 experiment you just ran and claim it applies to everybody equally.

But if you want to know what works for you, and do not particularly care to publish a scientific paper, you can do experiments freely, and the results are as valid as your experimental methodology and the resulting statistical power justify.

You are also further entitled at that point to trust your n=1 experiment for yourself over any future n=50 experiment in the future, because it doesn't matter whether 35 of 50 people slept better when taking Vitamin C before bed or whatever; what you personally care about is whether you do, and no amount of reading that paper will tell you whether you're going to be in the 35 or the 15.

I've had to experiment on myself like crazy for various reasons. My results are (most likely) utterly inapplicable to you. And I don't care very much about that. You can do your own experiments on you. In the meantime, while I don't know exactly what the parallel universe looks like in which I didn't do these experiments, I am very confident (95%+) parallel Jerf is in pretty bad shape and almost certainly on some rather powerful and nasty meds that he does not in fact need to be on that are actually making things worse in the long term.

My experiments have been informed by various papers related to my condition, so it's not like that science is useless; far from it! But, again, no amount of reading papers about Celiac disease and how taking more Taurine helped 80% of people's hearts work better will tell me whether I'm in the 80% or the 20%.

[pstuart]

I'm curious about your thoughts on Taurine (which I'm currently supplementing for eye health).

[jerf]

It had an immediate and significant positive effect on my heart, which at ~38 years old was starting to seriously misbehave. (Most likely paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, although after wearing a heart monitor for two weeks the doctors declined to diagnose. At this point my heart was misbehaving badly enough that I straight-up was not getting any quality sleep, just to give you an idea of how thump-ety-thump we're talking here.)

Re my comment about science still being useful, there are certainly papers about taurine supplementation being useful for people suffering from atrial fibrellation. IIRC, I did not find any references on that for Celiac specifically, but since Celiac is basically "generalized failure to properly absorb nutrients" it's not much of a leap to assume it's related.

For heart purposes, it should be matched with 1/2-1/3rd (from the looks of it; it's about as well tested as most dosages, which if you dig into them, are often a lot more guess-and-check than you might like) as much L-Arginine by mass, i.e., I take about 3g Taurine and 1g L-Arginine about three times a day. (I'm a big guy, but the papers often tested twice that, too, so it shouldn't be a dosage issue.)

It was ultimately only a part of the nutrient cocktail I ultimately ended up needing, but it was/is a very important part of it. On those occasions I run out of it, I can tell less than 24 hours later.

There are worse things than Celiac; at least I can supplement my way out of the worst aspects of it, and that's not a thing you can say about all chronic conditions. But it still sorta blows; I'm constantly playing nutrient catch-up with my body.

[pstuart]

Thanks! I'm already doing L-Citrulline (vs. L-Arginine) but wasn't aware of the synergistic aspect there.

For general gut health there's a bunch of interesting stuff about diet resistant starch as a probiotic -- not sure if that's on your radar.

[retzkek]

Perhaps that was an overly antagonistic choice of words, but when you consider the way such studies are analyzed, summarized, and reconstituted for consumption by the public, all nuance is lost and all that's left is a generic guideline that may have little or no relevance for any given person.

[tomp]

A population study is not "real vetted science".